Recipe · ~4 min · no coding required

Let your AI assistant search and summarize files on your computer

Your documents, invoices, and contracts live in folders on your machine — and you want to ask questions about them ("find the contract that mentions X", "sum up these invoices") without uploading anything anywhere.

You need

  • · An AI app that supports skills: Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor, VS Code — don't have one yet?
  • · The Filesystem skill (no API key)
  • · About 4 minutes

Step by step

  1. 1
    Decide which folder to share

    The skill only sees folders you explicitly list in its configuration — for example ~/Documents/Invoices. Everything else on your machine stays invisible. Pick something small and harmless for your first test.

  2. 2
    Install the Filesystem skill

    Use the install widget below. Important: replace the example folder path (~/Documents) in the snippet with the folder you actually want to share.

  3. 3
    Restart and ask

    Fully restart the app, then paste the prompt below — adjust the folder name to yours.

Install the Filesystem skill

You need: an AI app that supports skills (pick yours above) · Node.js (LTS) — one-time install from nodejs.org. Check with `node -v` in a terminal.

Open Settings → Developer → Edit Config in Claude Desktop (this opens claude_desktop_config.json) and merge this block, then fully restart the app:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "filesystem": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y",
        "@modelcontextprotocol/server-filesystem",
        "~/Documents"
      ]
    }
  }
}

The prompt

List all PDF files in the folder I shared with you, grouped by month based on the file date. Then open the three most recent ones and give me a one-line summary of each.

What you should see

The assistant lists your actual files with dates, reads the recent ones, and summarizes them — entirely on your machine, no upload involved.

Last reviewed 2026-06-10

If it doesn't work

It says it has no access to my files.
Check the folder path in the configuration: it must be an absolute path (e.g. /Users/yourname/Documents/Invoices, not a relative one), and the app must be fully restarted after the change.
`node -v` errors in the terminal.
Local skills run on Node.js. Install the LTS version from nodejs.org, then restart your AI app. This is a one-time setup that all npm-based skills share.
Can it also write or delete files?
The skill supports writing within the allowed folders if you ask it to. If you want read-only behavior, simply never prompt it to write — or share a copy of the folder instead of the original while testing.

Run a website? Make sure agents can read it.

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